This chapter reviews the several ways that bilateral and regional trade agreements regulate environmental and labour standards and human rights. It divides these into provisions granting the parties rights to adopt protective measures in the form of exceptions and conflicts provisions and provisions imposing on the parties obligations to take positive steps to implement certain norms. The chapter also reviews the extent to which these obligations can be enforced, if at all.

This chapter grapples with the question of whether the International Criminal Court should be conceptualized as a mechanism of transitional justice. Most schools of thought insist that transitional justice is either an inappropriate or an unrealistic goal for the Court. Some scholars have proposed that the Court might more accurately be theorized as seeking to achieve political goals through “juridified diplomacy”. Others suggest that the Court should speak primarily to a global, rather than local, audience. A third school of thought criticizes international criminal law as insufficiently focused on the preferences of societies affected by mass violence. Going one step further, some theorists suggest that the Court should be set aside in favor of mechanisms that are more responsive to local preferences. Though the incorporation of the International Criminal Court into a “locally owned” transitional justice paradigm faces substantial challenges, this chapter draws on a theory of bespoke transitional justice to suggest ways in which this knotty relationship might be better designed.

The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) will complete its proceedings over the coming years, leaving behind an enormous collection of records. The ICTY archive provides a record of conviction and acquittal, prosecution case and defense response – a vast series of contested facts and arguments. The ICTY winds down with a decidedly mixed reputation, especially among the communities of the Balkans, doing damage to the already-discredited idea of a Tribunal capable of aiding the processes of reconciliation. And yet the UN still speaks of the reconciliatory purposes the ICTY archives may serve. Pursuing reconciliation, however, sets up the archive for failure. It would be better for those establishing the archives to focus on other, attainable goals, taking into account Martha Minow’s (1998) caution against judicial records that merely “speak for themselves”. This essay provides historical context for the development of the ICTY archive, outlining its two decades of work, and emphasizes the political context from and into which the archive will emerge.

The study provides a practicable solution to the question whether and how witnesses can be pre-pared for their testimony before the International Criminal Court (ICC). For that purpose, the book highlights and analyses relevant judicial decisions of international tribunals as well as selected domestic decisions, especially from the USA and UK. It establishes an interdisciplinary approach by paying much needed attention to psychological pitfalls that arise from the interrogation setting of witness preparation sessions. Finally, the study concludes with a draft rule for ICC witness prepa-ration. Thus, it is of interest to scholars and practitioners of international criminal law alike.

Special Issue: Fragmentation in International Human Rights Law - Beyond Conflict of Laws

Marjan Ajevski, Fragmentation in International Human Rights Law – Beyond Conflict of Laws

Lucas Lixinski, Comparative International Human Rights Law: An Analysis of the Right to Private and Family Life across Human Rights “Jurisdictions”

Marjan Ajevski, Freedom of Speech as Related to Journalists in the ECtHR, IACtHR and the Human Rights Committee – a Study of Fragmentation

Orsolya Salát, Comparative Freedom of Assembly and the Fragmentation of International Human Rights Law

Svetlana Tyulkina, Fragmentation in International Human Rights Law: Political Parties and Freedom of Association in the Practice of the UN Human Rights Committee, European Court of Human Rights and Inter-American Court of Human Rights

This paper presents an analysis of constituent instruments of international organizations. Following an overview of the different names of these instruments, their content and the parties to such instruments, the main part discusses the legal characteristics of constituent instruments and their interpretation. Particular emphasis is put on the creation of a new legal person and constitutional development through 'practice of the organization'.

A demand for strengthened Security Council accountability has been put forward quite vigorously in the context of the individualized UN sanctions regimes. Over the years, a great variety of actors have voiced their concerns or outright condemnation of the accountability deficit that exists for UN sanctions regimes which target individuals. This accountability gap was effectively created when the heavily critiqued Security Council policy to impose comprehensive sanctions transmuted into designs of targeted sanctions regimes in the 1990s. The traditional procedures and accountability mechanisms that controlled the comprehensive sanctions against states were overall political and diplomatic in nature and not considered fit for the new sanctions paradigm which had the individual rather than the state as its core focus. The shift to targeted sanctions thus required fresh thinking about and new approaches to Security Council accountability. External actors, including states, and particularly their courts and parliaments, but also regional courts and parliaments, UN human rights bodies and special rapporteurs, scholars and civil society took the lead in exposing the accountability deficit and through concerted efforts they created the impetus for change. The protagonist in this story is beyond any doubt the European Court of Justice (ECJ) with its legendary Kadi-case. In light of the above panorama, this article examines issues of Security Council accountability in relation to individualized UN sanctions regimes. It particularly assesses and appraises the role of external forces in bringing about change within the UN system, with a focus on the ECJ and its Kadi case.

This paper advances a novel account of part of what justifies killing in war, grounded in the duties we owe to our loved ones to protect them from the severe harms with which war threatens them. It discusses the foundations of associative duties, then identifies the sorts of relationships, and the specific duties that they ground, which can be relevant to the ethics of war. It explains how those associative duties can justify killing in theory — in particular how they can justify overriding the rights to life of some of those who must be killed to win a war. It then shows how these duties can be operationalised in practice: first, showing how soldiers who fight on behalf of their community can act on reasons that apply to the members of that community; second, showing that the argument from associative duties does not prove too much — in particular, that it does not license the intentional killing of noncombatants in war.